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A modest beginning: US mass march for Palestine

David Finkel

The most important fact about the June 10, Washington DC March to End the Israeli Occupation was simply that it took place.

Part of an international weekend of mobilizations for Palestinian rights, marking the 40th anniversary of the 1967 war and the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza , the rally at the U.S. Capitol and march to the Ellipse drew a crowd of five or perhaps six thousand.

This is modest in comparison with the 20,000 who marched in London on June 9 (according to press reports I’m reading), and small indeed by the standards of major U.S. antiwar protests.

Its significance for the movement in this country, however, goes deeper than the numbers may indicate on the surface.

After an afternoon rally, we hit the streets in spirited fashion, with the loudest chants occurring as we passed by a couple hundred pro-Zionist counter-demonstrators on the sidewalk.

The march was called jointly by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), the dominant coalition in the current U.S. antiwar movement, and a partially overlapping coalition of several hundred groups called the Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

This was the first national action explicitly called by UFPJ centred on Palestine , an issue which many activists have long felt the UFPJ leadership hesitated to take on due to the overwhelming pro-Zionist consensus in the Congressional Democratic establishment.

The occupation in Palestine has been linked, to be sure, to the U.S. occupation of Iraq in antiwar mobilizations, but how to do this is a constant source of tension within as well as between antiwar coalitions.

Marches for Palestine have also been called by .hard. anti-imperialist and solidarity organizations, but June 10 was a first for the antiwar .mainstream..

Those with a long memory recall a real atrocity in 1982, at the height of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon , when a million people rallied in New York for nuclear disarmament and any mention of the Middle East or Lebanon was explicitly barred from the speakers’ platform.

Times have changed: On April 20, 2002, just months after 9/11, when hundreds of thousands marched in Washington against the Bush regime’s war in Afghanistan and its already sinister threats to Iraq, tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim Americans participated, expressing enormous solidarity with the Palestinian struggle (in the immediate wake of the Jenin massacre).

Some will be disappointed that this outpouring was not duplicated on this occasion, and that the overall size of the march was nowhere near the turnout for protests over the Iraq war.

But there are substantial reasons why such expectations were not realistic in this instance.

First and foremost, a large Arab and Muslim turnout - beyond the committed activists - depends on mobilizations within those communities through their own organisations, media, mosques etc.

That’s what built their turnout for April 20, 2002, not the antiwar organizations themselves. Today there is not only a real climate of fear among these communities; while rage over the U.S.-Israeli destruction of Palestine is deep, there is also demoralization over murderous Palestinian infighting and despair over the never-ending carnage in Iraq .

The U.S. antiwar movement as a whole is well below its historic peak of mobilizing power that was reached in 2003 - ironically, before American public opinion had turned overwhelmingly against the war.

More important, perhaps: While everyone in this country feels impacted by the U.S. disaster in Iraq , still only a small minority feels directly affected by the crisis over Israel/Palestine.

In terms of pure numerical turnout, a demonstration in New York City would be larger.

However, the organisers wanted to put the focus and the political .street heat. on Congress, with a day of mass lobbying to follow the Sunday march.

Further, UFPJ’s mobilisations typically occur on Saturday; this one was called for Sunday to avoid conflict with the Jewish Shabbat (not that this would affect most Jewish activists who are mainly, though not all, secular, but cultural sensitivity was important in this case).

Indeed, participation by Jewish Voice for Peace and other Jewish anti-occupation groupings was significant. In the circumstances, then, June 10 must be seen as a modest but important beginning. Where to go from here?

The pro-Palestinian movement is proceeding on several fronts, most important (in this writer’s view) with a struggle around selective divestment from Israel being waged in church denominations.

As for the broader antiwar movement in relation to Palestine , we face several strategic responsibilities.

Today, the U.S. antiwar movement represents the sentiments of the majority of the population and must act accordingly.

It’s important to enlarge the currently very small proportion of people who see the horrors in Palestine as affecting their own lives.

It’s going to be even more important to confront Congress, which remains rock-solid in support of Israel ’s atrocities even as it pours tens of billions more dollars into the Iraq debacle.

The movement must also step up its activism against the sinister threats of bombing Iran - which desperate neocons like Norman Podhoretz and the warmongering “Independent Democrat” Senator Joseph Lieberman openly advocate.

All this needs to be done without falling into the trap of ascribing the disastrous U.S. wars throughout the Middle East to “the power of the Zionist lobby overriding American national interests.”

We’ve made a start; the tasks facing us are massive and urgent.

David Finkel is an editor of AGAINST THE CURRENT, published by the U.S. socialist group Solidarity.